Formation of Academic Leadership in the Context of Trends in the Development of Modern Russian Higher Education

The article is based on the study of current problems of higher education based on the appeal to the ideas of the strategic importance of the reorientation of higher professional education in Russia to the formation of students’ creative skills and abilities, about the paradigm shift radically changing the culture of education itself as the fundamental basis of the educational space, the concept of regionalization of state policy in the field of higher education. The article highlights the leading trends in the diversification of state policy in the field of higher education and key scenarios for the development of higher education in the context of global and local challenges of our time. Among the leading trends that determine the specifics of the development of higher education, including in Russian conditions, there are professionalization, digitalization and regionalization. It is shown that the prospects of state policy in the educational sphere can be associated with the implementation of the “third mission” of the university, aimed at creating the necessary public goods, the forced formation of the institutional environment of its own region. The strategy of achieving academic leadership as a special state of the educational and scientific-innovative sphere, including in the regional space, is highlighted as the main mechanism for the development of state policy in the field of higher education.